


The Strings

by lily_lovely



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-18
Updated: 2009-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_lovely/pseuds/lily_lovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's left after your memory is gone?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strings

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before we knew a lot about the back stories of the Dolls, so I invented stories for them.

_"I enjoy touching."_

_"Touching makes you feel good."_

_"I think we should touch each other more often."_

_"I agree. Let's touch each other right now."_

***  
You wake up to the sound of traffic. You let yourself lie in bed for a moment, listening to the cars honk at each other outside your window—

_couldn't hear cars there, too far away from the roads, didn't even know what a car was until the memories started_

—before pushing the blankets off yourself and walking towards the kitchen. You think you can smell something cooking.

You find Bea cracking an egg, tapping it gently against the edge of the sink. You smile, grab an egg from the carton, and push your fingers into the shell—

_feels just like pressing fingers into someone's eyeballs, all squelchy and runny, did that to someone's crazy ex-boyfriend once_

—letting the two halves pull apart and the egg fall into the frying pan.

You watch as Bea's egg falls out of the shell and joins your own, the yolks running together until they're indistinguishable from each other.

Bea looks up and smiles self-consciously. "I...I couldn't remember us ever having eggs there, so I thought it might be—oh, maybe you don't even like them. Do you like eggs, Caroline?"

You think that maybe you both use each other's names more often than most people do. It's like you're trying to remember what goes behind the names, trying to prove that you fit together as real people.

Sometimes you forget, and you call each other 'Echo' and 'Sierra'.

But you don't think that will happen today. Today feels like one of the better days, for some reason. The eggs smell nice, and Bea must have gotten up early to start making them, and she _hates_ getting up early, and you're both doing that thing with your eyes that means you'll be all over each other after breakfast.

You pick up the spatula and start pushing them into the center of the pan. "Sure, Bea. I love eggs."

***  
_"It's important to remember things."_

_"I don't remember things sometimes. I wonder if that's bad."_

_"I don't think so. You just need to remember differently."_

_"Yes. There are different ways to remember things."_

***  
You roll onto your side, panting with exertion.

You feel smiley and lazy, but it's tinged with bitterness, as you remember when it wasn't like this—the long period of time when neither of you could bring yourselves to have sex. It had felt like something wrong, and shameful; once you weren't blank and unknowing, and knew what you'd been forced to do.

Bea turns over to look at you, and you know that she's thinking about it, too.

The memory of all those lonely, miserable months spent in separate beds makes you wrap your arms around her, trying to push away the thoughts for both of you.

The feel of Bea's skin underneath your own pulls snippets loose that had been buried beneath the oppressive weight of an avalanche of memories—

holding Sierra just like this,   
curled up together in the same sleeping pod,   
everything dark and warm and drowsy and safe,   
cuddling next to each other like puppies,   
hands exploring each other's bodies with free-roaming innocence,   
things seeming even more alright than usual.

Bea reaches up to touch your face softly, and you fall back into the present, where you really are safe.

Even though it's nine in the morning, and anybody who's going to be disturbed by noises you make already has been, what Bea says comes out in a whisper: "I'm glad that we're still together, Caroline. That they couldn't take us apart."

You capture Bea's other hand in your own, and rub it slowly. "Me, too."

***  
_"I like you more than the others."_

_"Even better than Victor? You are close."_

_"Not as close as we are."_

_"Good. I want us to be closest to each other."_

_"Okay. Let's forget about the others right now."_

***   
You're sitting up in the bed, leaning against the wall, and running Bea's hair through your fingers.

"Do you ever wonder about the others?" Bea asks suddenly.

You instantly knows what she means, but you're not sure how to answer. "Sometimes, I guess. Mostly Claire and Boyd. They were good to us."

Bea shivers a little. "My Handler...wasn't very good to me."

You don't know how to erase Bea's past—_actually_ erase it, not just wipe it from her memory—so you plant a soft kiss on her forehead, to let her know that you care.

Then she looks up at you with a smile, and you're reminded why you've always felt closer to her than to anyone else.

It's not just that you both know things that can't be shared with anyone who wasn't an Active—although you're not sure you could be with someone who hadn't experienced being _taken over_ like that; other people just don't understand.

But there's something else; beyond memory, beyond personality. At the white-hot flame of soul inside each of them, there's something that connects them.

You think of it as strings, sort of, and sometimes you can feel them—whenever you're far away from Bea, something inside you grows too tight. And when you're together, it's like...something burns so hot inside you that you think you're going to melt away.

But you never quite do.

Bea shifts under your hand, and you force your eyes to focus in time to see her sit up and turn away from you. "I'm going to go for a walk," she says over her shoulder, already pulling a shirt on.

You let your hand fall to the bed, empty and grasping. "Okay."

One of the hardest parts of trying to reclaim your life after the Dollhouse is how tangled up your strings can get.

***  
_"What did you do before you came here?"_

_"I...I don't know."_

_"Sometimes I think that I've always been here."_

_"Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we were never anywhere else."_

***  
You stare out the window, still sitting on the bed, still reaching your hand out fruitlessly. You think you can see her—there's a glimmer of her hair, a flash of a leg—and then she turns the corner and disappears.

She does that sometimes—just walks off. You try not to take it personally; it's probably just because life was harder for her in the Dollhouse, without someone looking out for her like Boyd looked out for you—but it still makes your stomach turn over when you can feel the strings stretching farther and farther.

You look out the window, and you think—as you often do when Bea leaves you alone with your thoughts—about the events that brought you here.

You fall into the memories seamlessly. Sometimes it seems like you never really leave—

_"We have to get them out of here."_

_"Our first priority is our own safety."_

_"Echo? Where are you?"_

_"I'm leaving."_

_"Oh, God, I never should have signed up for this. I never should have done this."_

_"We're terrible people. We have to stay and get the punishment we deserve."_

_"We? The people really behind this are fleeing and leaving us holding the bag. I'm not getting stuck with that just because I didn't have a back-up plan."_

_"What about the Actives?"_

_"I'm sure the nice boys in blue will take care of them. Now let's get out of here!"_

_"No! We have to—oh, shit."_

You can still see the FBI agent—you think his name was Agent Baldwin, or Backard, or something—pulling you by the hand into a police car. You remember investigations, and charges, and paperwork that all amounted to letting all of you go with a nice check for your troubles.

You were never told what happened to the Handlers or any of the other workers, but you remember that Victor went back to being a butcher in Montana. November went on the talk show circuit with her story, and Tango...

...well, there were rumors. You never looked too closely into them—it was too depressing to think about.

All of the other Actives lost touch completely—which you understand. None of them wanted to remember what had happened to them.

But you and Sier—_Bea_, but you and _Bea_ didn't know what to do. Neither of you remembered anything about your old lives except your names.

You felt the strings, then, too—and you knew that the strings were all either of you really had.

***  
_"Do you think that things ever end?"_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"When we eat breakfast, it has an end. This canteloupe has an end, the massage has an end, the yoga pose has an end, the sleep has an end. Do our lives have ends?"_

_"That thought frightens me. I don't want to end."_

_"I don't, either."_

_"Will you promise me that we will never end?"_

_"I promise you."_

***  
You get sadder and sadder the more you think about the past, so you get out of bed and put on your clothes.

You think that you have to get out of here. You hardly ever leave the apartment, and the stipend will run out eventually.

And what if Bea's getting tired of you? What if she doesn't feel the strings like you do?

You're running plans for what to do next through your head as fast as you can mentally calculate airfares—and then the door opens.

Bea comes through it, crying softly. "Caroline...I remembered. I remembered who I was before."

You stare at her with a mix of incredulity and hope. "Re-really? What did you remember?"

She's crying, but the smile on her face is so glowy that you think it must be because she's so happy. "We were together, Caroline. Before the Dollhouse. Our parents sent us to the Dollhouse to take us apart, but it didn't work. They couldn't break us."

You remember it all, suddenly.

Kissing in the rain, having sex for the first time, your parents finding you together and going so insane that they sign you up for the first thing they hear of—which is the Dollhouse, supposedly a therapy for lesbians, supposedly just for the five weeks, to 'cure' you of it.

You don't know what to say. It's all so much—you're devastated by how everyone betrayed you, but it feels so good to have an identity again—to know who you are.

You can feel the strings turn into ropes, and now, you suddenly wonder if this is something you share, too.

"Bea? Do-do you think that we have strings? Between us? Like, connecting us together?"

She brings her hand up to her mouth with a little gasp of surprise. "How did you know? That's exactly what I—"

And whatever she was going to say next is lost as you run over and kiss her.

You think the fires have finally melted you away, but that's what you wanted all along.


End file.
